Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Just 99 per cent. I think there are genuine attempts to rectify but also train our business community that we shouldn't always be investing just in one country. It is important that we don't have all our eggs in the one basket. It's about also encouraging that mindset of thinking 10 steps ahead, just in case there is, unfortunately, another pandemic or disaster in the future. It is important that there is support there by government.

The department of agriculture, when they did their most recent snapshot of the industry, showed that Australian ag accounted for 11 per cent of all our goods and services that were exported, including value-adding processes. Ag, forestry and fisheries contributed about 12 per cent to GDP. That was around $150 billion every single year.

Ag has always been part of our national history and a very strong source of prosperity, given its importance to our economy generally. But Australian businesses have already been feeling the impact of the global supply chain disruptions, amid a perfect storm of factors. From COVID, we had increased consumer spending, we had Labor shortages and we had climate related disasters. On top of that, China ended up banning urea, which made the problem a lot worse.

As we know, urea is a very important ingredient. I think, at the time, there was some media around how that would have impacted on AdBlue, an additive used in fuels for a lot of our trucks. Without our trucks moving this country, quite frankly, Australia stops. Our truckies do a fantastic job. I want to pay tribute to any of those listening on ABC radio. I just hope they're doing a great job, especially those up in northern Western Australian at the moment who are, no doubt, transporting quite a bit of goods between Perth and Darwin, and God knows where else they're coming from. Good on them for the hard work they do. There were moves to reduce urea exports, which did expose how resilient sections of the Australian economy were on the global supply chain.

That is just one example of where the previous government was left scrambling to find alternative sources. But I think it's fair to say that we have all learned, in this place, our lessons. There are genuine attempts to ensure that such issues don't occur or are, at least, minimised. We need to make sure that we do start to minimise our risks in this country, when it comes to our global supply chains.

The pandemic also demonstrated that Australia must proactively take steps to secure its supply of key economic inputs. This will require scaling up domestic manufacturing. It's why the Albanese government is working very hard with industry to develop capabilities that we need to ensure that Australian's supply chains remain resilient. This should not be mistaken for a foreign policy that would see Australia withdraw from the international community. Our country has and always will be a trading nation. But it is prudent that as a trading nation we take steps to secure all aspects of our supply chain, including necessary inputs, and where these inputs can be made here, they should so do.

It is important that we back in our manufacturing sector, because it is so important that we retain the number of jobs that support our regional communities right across Australia. Australia must be a country that makes things here.